This week, for our inaugural Escapist Podcast (Beta), Russ Pitts, Susan Arendt, Steve Butts and Justin Clouse discuss the PSN outage controversy, the games we're all playing this week and those to which we are looking forward. Plus, an exclusive preview of the next song by Miracle of Sound: "Wheatley's Song," from Portal 2.

Ref: Sony, I'm with Russ, but would add that none of this is happening in a vacuum. The global economy is still pretty shaky and the average consumer's disposable income has dropped. They're going to be more cautious about their spending, and when something like this happens - which is almost more of a PR disaster than a technical problem - it's going to make them think twice about where they put their money. Particularly those who don't buy into a console for the games, necessarily, but to have a home entertainment centre.

Ref: LA Noire, God yes! You don't often see anyone tackle the detective genre full stop, and when they do, it often ends up being a puzzle game rather than a detective narrative. The only puzzle in a whodunnit ought to be whodunnit; anything else is irrelevant.

Ref: playing the bad guy and Susan's qualms, this is the difference between a Raft and a Bogart.

Raft was in the original Scarface, way back in 1932. He was a New Yorker born and bred and had a pretty dodgy sheet; the LA police nearly turned him back at the train station because they figured he was a scout for New York mobsters and not a dancer-turned-actor. But he knew gangster movies were popular and he wasn't going to be able to get away from playing that kind of tough guy, so he set up a few rules that he always demanded were followed in his screen roles. That way he figured he'd still be a kind of white knight on screen even when he was playing the bad guy. One of his rules was he'd never hurt women, either physically or any other way, so he lost out on some pretty major roles - Casablanca, Maltese Falcon - to Bogart, who didn't have Raft's hangups.

I think Susan would enjoy playing a Raft-type: someone ambiguous, possibly a crook, but with a genuine moral code. Problem being, as has been discussed to death, gaming doesn't do morality well. Still, if Noire is a genuine hit, maybe we'll see characters like that in similar games.

Formica Archonis:Oh, and guys: I know you love this image and it has served you well, but it doesn't work well when you don't have a video stream

Yeah, this is the first time we ever uploaded just an audio track. I'm going to play with the player over the weekend to see if I can get it to behave better. We'll also have audio-only podcasts available (for everything) next week :)

I like it. It's so much better with more people, so I like it more than the other podcast with Yahtzee and Mikey, which is hard for me to say. I did get that reference and I'm young. I like the idea of just sitting around talking and you have some nice conversation going there, but for next time, how about some community interaction? I've always thought of this site as really community focused, and you're usually great at getting us involved, so why not here? You could include user questions, discuss current community events, maybe have a user as a guest or something.

GeorgW:I like it. It's so much better with more people, so I like it more than the other podcast with Yahtzee and Mikey, which is hard for me to say. I did get that reference and I'm young. I like the idea of just sitting around talking and you have some nice conversation going there, but for next time, how about some community interaction? I've always thought of this site as really community focused, and you're usually great at getting us involved, so why not here? You could include user questions, discuss current community events, maybe have a user as a guest or something.

Well, it was our first one, so we didn't have any questions to answer. But you undoubtedly caught the email address to submit questions, so get submittin'!

GeorgW:I like it. It's so much better with more people, so I like it more than the other podcast with Yahtzee and Mikey, which is hard for me to say. I did get that reference and I'm young. I like the idea of just sitting around talking and you have some nice conversation going there, but for next time, how about some community interaction? I've always thought of this site as really community focused, and you're usually great at getting us involved, so why not here? You could include user questions, discuss current community events, maybe have a user as a guest or something.

Well, it was our first one, so we didn't have any questions to answer. But you undoubtedly caught the email address to submit questions, so get submittin'!

I didn't catch it actually, mind telling me again? Or maybe we could just post our questions here?

Yup, that was excellent. Reminds me of sitting around with my housemates at uni and bantering about video games, except you guys actually know your stuff and don't go off on South Park-quoting tangents every five bloody minutes. Definitely looking forward to more o'this.

GeorgW:I like it. It's so much better with more people, so I like it more than the other podcast with Yahtzee and Mikey, which is hard for me to say. I did get that reference and I'm young. I like the idea of just sitting around talking and you have some nice conversation going there, but for next time, how about some community interaction? I've always thought of this site as really community focused, and you're usually great at getting us involved, so why not here? You could include user questions, discuss current community events, maybe have a user as a guest or something.

Well, it was our first one, so we didn't have any questions to answer. But you undoubtedly caught the email address to submit questions, so get submittin'!

I didn't catch it actually, mind telling me again? Or maybe we could just post our questions here?

Agreed. We haven't done a lot of audio-only recording in the office until now, so I had to cut some corners in order to get four mics live. The good news is I know exactly where the suck is coming from and how to fix it.

TimeLord:Will the audio tracks be available as a separate RSS feed for iTunes like the videos are already for PubClub members?

Yep, they'll be a separate feed from the videos. I need to give them a final test this morning, and if it looks like everything is on the CDN, I'll add the links to the feed page and post a notice up.

I noticed that we can now get Miracle of Sound's videos in Podcast form. Is he aware of that? As he does sell his songs on iTunes and his personal site.I mean, I'm cool with them being free. But he's loosing money because now people like me don't need to buy his songs any more :/

Excellent Podcast, great stuff. I was thinking maybe you guys could invite people from the PubClub to podcast with you? We have many great guys and gals here, I bet if they would want to they would share awesome stuff with ya'll. Just a suggestion!